The premise might seem familiar: three 30ish high-school classmates — Regan (Kirsten Dunst), Gena (Lizzy Caplan), and Katie (Isla Fisher) — celebrate the impending nuptials of a fourth, Becky (Rebel Wilson). But Leslye Headland's debut quickly subverts expectations with its mordant honesty and its hilarious balancing of sensitivity and scatalogy. Becky, heavyset and unflashy, seems the last person in this contingent to land a beau. Or so her more debauched fellow alumnae think.

Resentfully, they spend the night before in a wild Manhattan saturnalia involving cocaine, chaotic sex, vomiting, and a torn dress that sends them into a race-against-the-clock panic. An interlude with the bachelor-party boys sharpens the critique of gender roles, hedonism, and romantic love. Boasting the best ensemble cast of the year, this party doesn't end happily ever after — but for some in this bunch, that might be the happiest ending of all.

Review: Dark Shadows By the time Dark Shadows gets to the opening credits, it is already Tim Burton's best film since Ed Wood , but then I've always had a soft spot for the Moody Blues' "Nights in White Satin."

Review: Natural Selection So memorable as Ed Helms's harridan wife in The Hangover , Rachael Harris is a natural for a lead role.

Review: The Devil's Double Watching this litany of murder and debauchery in the gilded splendor of Saddam's Baghdad, in which Dominic Cooper plays both Saddam's psycho son Uday and the Iraqi good guy Latif, who was forced to serve as his double, I thought: this is like Scarface, but with a difference.

Review: Circumstance Circumstance begins like an early Kiarostami film, but with schoolgirls in hijabs instead of schoolboys in sweaters.

Review: Tyrannosaur In his directorial debut, actor Paddy Considine has learned that the best way to develop sympathy for someone who kicks his dog to death is by comparing him to another character (Eddie Marsan) who urinates on his wife.

Review: Serbis There couldn't be a more promising set-up for a movie than the one in Brillante Mendoza's film: a family-run gay-porno-movie theater.

Cross Town Traffic at the Wilbur When bespectacled alt-comic icon David Cross paid a visit to the Wilbur Theatre last October, he giddily tore Boston “a new asshole” — but, hey, at least he was kind enough to have “stitched that new asshole up with jokes.”

Uninformed brilliance July 29, 9:40 am ET. Acclaimed standup comedian Bill Burr is running late for our scheduled half-hour phone interview, where we plan on talking up his upcoming appearance in Newport, along with any other topic lobbed at the red-headed, "shockingly Caucasian" pride of nearby Canton, Massachusetts.

Monty Python takes the stage at MSMT "Adult Situations," a sign in the theater lobby promises, though as my companion eagerly commented pre-curtain, the disclaimer should perhaps also include a warning of "Childish Situations."